The return of the Portland podcast

(If you want to skip all my blathering and listen to the latest edition of Ink & Pine, click here. If you want to hear why Ink & Pine disappeared for so long and a little bit more about the show moving forward, please, by all means, keep reading…)

Anyway, the other day, one of my Twitter followers Tweeted at me: “So whatever happened to Ink & Pine? I miss having a regular podcast connection to my home state.”

His timing was perfect. As it so happened, Ink & Pine was being resurrected that very day.

Perhaps some backstory is due.

You see, the last thing I remember is waking up in a tub of fluid, with thick needles drilled into my bones and protruding painfully from all sides of my body…

No, wait, wrong backstory. That was Wolverine.

The Ink & Pine explanation is this: After years under the leadership of founder Dan Bodoff, Maine Digital Press — with whom the BDN partners on I&P — found itself temporarily leader-less.

Dan moved away to pursue a new professional opportunity, and that was exciting and we all wished him luck. But it took a few months for Dan to transition MDP to a new leadership team and let that team settle in.

Now, thanks to Dan’s vision, I dare say Maine Digital Press and Ink & Pine are as strong as ever. Dan handed the reins over to longtime co-collaborator Trent Gay, and now he’s one of the new voices you’ll hear on Ink & Pine every week.

The other is MDP producer Cat Smith. I’m thrilled to be working with both Trent and Cat, and I think in just the two episodes we’ve recorded since the Ink & Pine reboot, we’ve built great chemistry and tackled really fascinating topics with really interesting Portland area people.

That’s only going to continue.

Plans for the show moving forward, at this point, include ultimately giving Ink & Pine its own landing page blog on the website for the Bangor Daily News, the most-read daily newspaper in the state of Maine.

That’ll be a nice change and offer the podcast it’s own launching spot from the BDN site in addition to inkandpine.com.

The first edition under the reboot, which we posted yesterday, features an interview with slam poet Beau Williams, the Grand Slam Champion of Port Veritas. It was a great interview. If you’ve never heard this type of performance poetry, want to learn more about that scene or simply want to hear a really interesting person tell his story, this episode is worth a listen.

In the meantime, it’s Memorial Day Weekend. You’re going to have some time to put your feet up and relax, and you’re going to have time to open up inkandpine.com and listen to our interview with Beau Williams.